Meadows dotted, constellated,
clustered, clumped and galaxied
in shining celandines.
Strangely frosty from a hilltop distance,
an easy descent and some stile vaulting
reveals a field of white-lilac cuckoo-flowers,
carpeting so thickly they dither together
yet delicately.
Bluebells line a holly culvert,
and the saddles of full-leaved woods
are wrung with thrushes,
trilling to momentary diamond silence.
Down a bluebell and young fern bank
a wind-chime's tied to overreaching bough,
under the broad-stepped way.
Two grown boys with their
bounding boxer dog,
seeming to sail slowly through the air.
The foremost frowns,
the back of one hand hiding something.
The rearward grins a grin still growing
as he passes us by.
Their redolent trail of skunk* lasts us
a hundred yards back the way they came.
The climb to the edge seems twice as hard
as the last time I achieved it.
The apple at the top when we all stop
twice the sweet oblivion of mouth-drench.
Under the berried holly on the Path of Wells
bumble-bees wag their dance
by leaf-littered holes.
A stream flows steady
from the Goddess' trough
overspilling down hill
in a boggy series of mini-pools.
A fallen tree's a bridge
across another stream
to nowhere on the track we tread.
Still growing tall boughs on the upward side,
that trunk and the bog it touches
covered in virid algae.
And the thrushes are everywhere,
unseen openers of the way,
resounding bittersweet mysteries.
.......................
* Cannabis
YOU ARE READING
Bare Shouldered
Poetry"The difference of high Sensations with and without knowledge appears to me this - in the latter case we are falling continually ten thousand fathoms deep and being blown up again without wings and with all [the] horror of a bare shouldered Creature...
